Why study Spolia?

When we study the past, we search for patterns, for
influence, and hence for meaning – no more so than when we study
spolia.Throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed to our own day, we have contemporary
accounts which express enthusiasm for the prestigious materials of antiquity
(especially marble, which could carry “power”[1],
columns, and squared building-blocks, some of large dimensions) – an enthusiasm
for the heroic age, and the older the better (perhaps), similar to Pausanias’
attitude to his material[2].
Columns were attractive to the Middle Ages for a host of reasons. Not only were
they almost a trademark of classical architecture, but they were easy to get at
and easy to transport, because they could be rolled like logs. Usually of
marble, they were (when monolithic) long and strong, and beautiful as well,
because highly polished.

Not, of course, that reuse of spolia is restricted to
Greek or Roman materials, or indeed to the Middle Ages. There are plentiful
examples of pre-mediaeval use; at Rome, the 3rd century BC Temple of
Apollo Sosias used 5th century BC spolia to make a coherent monument
with reference to the older antique. Nor is it unusual in Greece to find
megalithic spolia in Christian churches, presumably with some meaning to be
attached to the reuse[3];
and it has been argued that the history of monument construction and reuse in
Messenia (SW Greece) specifically refers back to the Heroic Age[4].
In at least one 12th-century French account of abbey building[5],
the spolia may be antique, but taken from a ruined church – a mirror of what
the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks did with earlier structures in Turkey. Cassiodorus[6]
is enthusiastic about the qualities of spolia: Sine usu jacere non decet,
quod potest ad decorem crescere civitatis: quia non est sapientiae profutura
contemnere. Et ideo illustris magnificentiatuamarmorumquadratosquipassim diruti negliguntur,
quibus hoc opus videtur injunctum, in fabricam murorum faciat deputari; ut
redeat in decorem publicum prisca constructio, et ornent aliquid saxa jacentia
post ruinas...

Spolia allow us to trace the afterlife of classical
art and architecture (or, in different contexts, of Phoenician, or cyclopean
architecture; or mediaeval architecture in Britain after the Dissolution of the
Monasteries). Their very use generally reflects diminished population levels,
whilst the quantity employed underlines the large scale of many classical
cities. Sometimes there is an aesthetic component in reuse, so that classical gloria
survives, as if reuse were a thermometer of a continuing classical tradition.
But without documentary evidence, or abundant comparanda, there are manifold
problems. Does display mean pride in one’s own or an adopted past? Or can use
be equated simply with nonchalance?

Different aesthetic horizons from the Middle Ages mean
that it is difficult for us to appreciate purposes of reuse, or contemporary
impact: some of the great Byzantine basilicas of non-metropolitan Turkey (such
as that at Xanthos) may well seem crude to us – but did they to contemporaries?
Thus even when later travellers declare the high quality of walls which we know
are decorated with column shafts (as at Aleppo[7]),
they annoyingly refuse to mention anything beyond appropriate decoration,
or an equivalent phrase. Even in the West, documentary evidence of finding
spolia is scarce[8]. Indeed,
just because a monument exists, does not mean it was appreciated: for example,
we know that many Crusaders saw Baalbec; but it seems to have made no
impression. In 1100, Bohemond and Baldwin went up the Jordan Valley to the
Litani Valley, but we have no accounts from them; whilst Fulcher of Chartres
confused Baalbec with Palmyra[9].
Even Ibn Battuta stayed only overnight, mentions that it is a beautiful old
city, but says no more - although one Arab author classifies the ruins,
along with the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Lake of Tiberias and the Dead Sea
as one of the marvels of Syria.[10]
One reason for disjuncture between our horizons and earlier ones is that the
re-creation of the antique in the Middle Ages usually ignores antique
monumentality, as Hansen[11]
states to be the case in the Renaissance before 1470: antique architecture
only appeared as discrete decorative elements, typically elements of the
columnar orders such as bases and capitals, disconnected from their monumental
raison d’etre, the building as such. A parallel point he makes is the lack
of interest in ruins – the skeleton of structure, as it were, on which the
clothing can be placed. So, dealing with spolia, perhaps we should not be too
exigent in expecting our rebuilds to look Roman to our eyes.

Spolia can help us study the aftermath of the
classical world, because spoliation may protect antiquities, and help them to
survive (for example, the great walls at Olympia or Pergamum). Sometimes reuse
involves the complete dismantling of standing, intact antique structures
(Pergamum, Korykos); but usually charting an afterlife is complicated by
earthquakes, and stages of ruination and depopulation. Use of spolia offers us
insights into the history of fortification and of religious buildings (large
civic examples might once have existed, but none have survived from our period
and area); into transportation: fewer antiquities survive the nearer they were
to the sea; and into the mechanics of building, underlining the immense effort
required to construct late antique spolia fortifications. All these features
are easier to study in Turkey and North Africa, where we can infer what the
monumental antique and spolia landscape of the western Middle Ages might have
been like.

Although the term spolia includes anything
reused from earlier buildings or artworks, and not necessarily from classical
antiquity, for our purposes it is columns, granite, marble reliefs and veneers,
and large building blocks which constitute the majority of the material
covetted by the Middle Ages, East and West, Christian and Muslim alike, as we
see throughout in the Patrologia Latina, where there are plentiful
examples of what Sodini calls an un engouement extraordinaire pour les
marbres, appréciés pour leurs couleurs et leurs veines from the earlier
Byzantine centuries[12].
The Middle Ages are expansive on the features they especially prized in such
spolia - often features they would have found difficult or impossible to
reproduce conveniently themselves. One is that they are polished, and therefore
gleam[13];
this same obsession is common, of course, in the West as well[14].
Another is that they are square, and therefore a decided help in good building
construction[15]; the walls
of Antioch were admired in part for this very reason[16].
Mortarless joints and iron- or lead-cramped joints are also an admired feature[17],
and people marvelled as late as the 19th century that the fit
between the blocks could be so tight[18].
Pulling down an antique fortress allowed the Muslims to study earlier
construction techniques, and a letter of 1179/80 provided one of several
admiring descriptions of earlier techniques. It comes from Nour el-Din's and
Salah el'Din's Livre des deux Jardins[19],
describing in a letter from El Fadhel to Baghdad in 1179/80 the destruction of
the fortress of Beit al-Ahzan: La largeur de la muraille dépassait dix
coudees: elle était construite en pierres de taille énormes dont chaque cube
avait sept coudées, plus ou moins; le nombre de ces pierres de taille excedait
vingt mille … Entre les deux murs s'étendait une ligne de blocs massifs.The very use of cut stone - spolia
blocks - is thought worth recording, as is confirmed by El-Bekri's description
of the amphitheatre at Sousse, of which little now survives: Ce vaste
édifice, de construction antique, est posé sur des vôutes très larges et très
hautes ... Souca est entièrement bâtie en pierres de taille - and he seems
to consider pierre de taille as a kind of stone, to which he gives a
technical name[20].

To the practical and aesthetic reasons for using
spolia, we may add the interest of later generations in linking with their own
past, or of invaders in constructing a local identity. This idea has been much
supported for spolia inthe West, as in
Todisco's account[21]
of the antique lions, inscriptionsand
funerary reliefs at Melfi, where la rivitalizzazione di antichi blocchi
inscritti...sigiustificainfatti nell'interesse, ricco di
implicazioni ideologiche, da parte dei Normanni per il retroterra
culturaledelleregioniconquistate, e quindi di quelle romane dell'Italiameridionale.

Spolia are sometimes so prized that their discovery is
hailed as a miracle, as in the description of the uncovering of marble blocks
when the building of Modena was held up for want of materials. This can be
paralleled in the building of a church to the Mother of God in Jerusalem[22]:
the site ... made it impossible for those who were preparing the foundations
to bring columns from outside ...God
revealed a natural supply of stone perfectly suited to this purpose in the near
by hills, one which had either lain there in concealment previously, or was
created at that moment ... So the church is supported on all sides by a great
number of huge columns from that place, which in colour resemble flames of
fire, some standing below and some above and others in the stoas which surround
the whole church except on the side facing the east.Two of these columns stand before the door of the church,
exceptionally large and probably second to no columns in the whole world. The
colour might indicate a breccia, or a variety of giallo antico.

Such a high value placed on spolia explains its role
as booty, for use in the most prestigious buildings. Thus for Saladin's repairs
to the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem in 1187: on fit venir du marbre dont on
ne pourrait trouver le pareil, de cubes (de verre) dorés ... la façon
byzantine, et autres objets nécéssaires, le tout amassé depuis longues années
... The Franks living in Jerusalem were some of them bought out by the
Muslims, and the Franks abandonnèrent de nombreux objets qu'il leur fut
impossible de vendre, tels que lits, coffres, tonneaux, etc. Ils laissèrent
aussi une grande quantité de marbre qui n'avait pas son pareil, et qui
consistait en colonnes, en tablettes, en petits cubes (pour former des
mosaïques)…[23] Thus could
the Moslems imitate Rome, said by Ibn Al-Faqih Al-Hamadani to contain 24,000
churches, les plafonds, les murs, les pierres d'angle, les colonnes et les
fenêtres sont des monolithes de marbre blanc[24].
Muslims were perfectly happy to reuse Crusader spolia, often with just a light
chiselling out of human features: they chose the most exquisite pieces
for the Haram al Sharif. The Dikka in the Al-Aqsa mosque is almost completely
made out of Crusader spolia, whilst in the north transept of the Holy
Sepulchre, the spolia include 8thC Abbasid Corinthian capitals, and 11thC
Byzantine material. Clearly, their watchword was quality, not necessarily
origin[25].
Again, Muslim admiration for marble perhaps begins very early: it is related
that Mahomet was buried in a wooden coffin with a marble roof over it, and an
inscription in marble[26];
whilst the Ka’ba was very rich in marble[27].

Notwithstanding the foregoing comments, many questions
remain. Is reuse primarily practical before it is decorative or identity-giving[28]?
Assessing intention is contentious and difficult. How would we tell? Is the
movement always from practicality to decoration - from fortification to Palazzo
Pitti, as it were - or is usage diverse? Does spoliation have universal
constants? Is there any use of column shafts for decoration or strengthening
west of Turkey and Greece? If we consider what might have been fashionable, are
there any connections between the use of column shafts in the east, and of
marble disks in Rome and ceramic bacini in (for example) Pisa, where there were
probably once well over 2,000? If so, can we determine date-limits for such
fashions? Again, does reuse of spolia signal a continuous classical tradition ?
Not in Turkey, but there are separate Byzantine, Seljuk, and Armenian revivals.
And what did the mediaeval spoliators learn from late antique spoliation? Does
imitation operate here, as with imitation of original classical structures, as
for example in bossed decoration?

What should we understand from cases which seem to
reveal no selective concern for earlier remains, such as at Kanytelleis, or the
lack of interest in archaic statues on Delos, although probably only
half-buried? Several of the kouroi in Delos Museum are degraded from the waist
upwards, suggesting long exposure of their upper portions; others are degraded
all over – and hence presumably ignored by the marble-hunters who came for
columns. From such evidence, can we posit an aesthetic stance which
demonstrates decided preserences via a lack of interest in archaic
styles? Delos, conveniently on trade routes, was probably being robbed during
the Middle Ages, and was being systematically plundered by the 17th
century, and on a large scale.[29]
Travellers kept a weather-eye open for likely materials[30],
even if the French Ambassador to Turkey visited the island in1700, and could still examine les ruines
incompréhensibles non seulement du temple d'Apollon, mais de l'isle entière …
ce sont des montagnes de pierre et de marbre[31].
Kenelm Digby scavenged there for the British King, and Thomas Roe as agent for
Arundel and Buckingham. Thus Chishull counts six granite columns erect, and
notes that there were eleven standing when Sponand Wheler were there in 1675-6). He also notes pieces of the
sacred lions facing the lake, but a local hunter assured him that a few years
previously there were five whole ones.[32]
Stuart and Revett complain of continuing depradation in the following century,
especially for new funeral monuments, but also for lintels and window cills; so
that, in a few years, it may be as naked as when it first made its appearance
above the surface of the sea[33].
From the point of view of the ideology of reuse, such cases are interesting.

At Kanytelleis, on a ridge overlooking the
south-facing coast of Turkey, not far from Korykos, and apparently never a city[34],
a Byzantine sanctuary was built with five churches - large and very imposing
basilicas and monasteries, and all apparently constructed without recourse to
spolia – and this in spite of the enormous quantities available in the
immediate vicinity. Indeed, the Hellenistic watchtower, a splendid construction
of bossed masonry at the southern entrance to the city, survives, probably
because it was still useful; but outside the city’s northern limits are some
fine tomb terraces of much earlier date including, to the west, a temple tomb
with barrel vault, and another with Doric columns. These announce the beginning
of a still extant street of tombs, which is echoed on the city’s southern
approach. So were the necropoleis (and watchtower) preserved as a testimony to
the city’s august origins? Something similar occurs not many kilometres to the
east, at Elaiussa Sebaste, a much larger classical settlement, where several of
the many churches do indeed use spolia, but where, although the temples seen in
the early 19th century have now gone[35],
the enormous necropoleis seem similarly intact. In both cases, of course, the
visitor to the city would have been impressed by the approach; and at Elaiussa,
the traveller passing along the coast, or even out to sea, would have seen the
terraced necropoleis displayed along the ridge. To our modern minds, non-use
would imply a much greater respect for the monuments than parcelling them into
pieces and re-using them as spolia; but we have no evidence that, in Turkey,
leaving ancient monuments intact meant anything beyond indifference, or a
superabundance of targets for spolia.

Applying all these questions to a study of survivals
in Turkey and round the Mediterranean to North Africa, five salient factors
emerge:

1.Most reuse of spolia is
opportunistic, being played against a background of declining population,
frequent danger, and an aggressive stripping of the past to accommodate the
present;

2.So ruthless was such
stripping to become that we can recognise the same developing “marble
starvation” in the East that we find in the West – that is, a dearth of
matching materials, and a make-and-mend mentality;

3.Marble, presumably
robbed from ancient monuments, is prized (certainly by the 12th
century) by Christian and Moslem alike, and collected over time - hoarded, in
fact;

4.However we must always
be aware of differing aesthetic horizons. Although we have insufficient evidence
to determine clear civic attitudes to spolia, such encroaching “marble
starvation” is in itself a pointer toward aesthetic appreciation of the past,
at least for the beauty of the materials, if not their matching regularity;

5.We have much stronger evidence
of aesthetic reuse of the past by the military, and for the defence of cities,
where such work is frequently modelled on a consistent vision of the past which
embraces spolia for practical as well as aesthetic purposes.

[1]
P. CHUVIN, A chronicle of the last pagans,Harvard 1990, p.76ff: despoliation of the Marneion in Gaza, after a
decree in 398, and against much local opposition;

[2]
K.W. ARAFAT, Pausanias’ attitude to antiquities, in Annual of the British School at Athens,87 (1992), 387-409;

[29]
J. RANDOLPH, The present state of the islands of the archipelago, sea of
Constantinople, and gulf of Smyrna, Oxford 1687, p. 20: The Ruins are
carryed away by all ships who come to anchor here, so as part are in England,
France, Holland, but most at Venice;

[30]J. SANDYS, Sandys Travails etc, London
1652. p.9: The ruins of Apollo’s temple are here yet to be seen, affording
fair pillars of marble to such as will fetch them, and other stones of price,
both in their nature and for their workmanship;

[32]
E. CHISHULL, Travels in Turkey and back to England, London 1747 – but relating
travels fron 1698 to 1702, p.61 for Tournefort on Delos (there in 1701-2);

[33]
Stuart and Revett were on Delos in March 1753, and their account was published
in 1794, in Antiquities of Athens III, p. 57. Their editor, Willey
Reveley, notes that The antiquities, described in this chapter, are said to
have been taken away by a Russian fleet, in the last war against the Turks
(loc.cit). This process halted only when the French began digging there, in
1873;

[35]
F. BEAUFORT, Karamania, or a brief description of the south coast of
Asia-Minor and of the remains of antiquity, with plans, views etc collected
during a survey of that coast, under the orders of the Lords Commissioners of
the Admiralty, in the years 1811 and 1812. MS in Kew, Public Record Office
[hereafter PRO], ADM7/847;